


I Love You (No You Don't)

by tigersinlondon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Actually a little bit of plot, Anal Sex, Bottom Kylo Ren, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, Hux's first name is Elan, Love Confessions, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Top Armitage Hux, Under-Desk Blow Jobs, fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersinlondon/pseuds/tigersinlondon
Summary: A 5+1 fic - five times Kylo tells Hux he loves him but Hux doesn't believe him, plus one time he does.Written 2016.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	I Love You (No You Don't)

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this back in 2016, but now, in the End Times, it seems appropriate to edit old WIPs and let them see the light of day. Don't @ me.
> 
> Dedicated to my dearest not-wife supostatka, and my old friend the-alligator-queen (who I haven't spoken to in 3 years since they disappeared from the internet. Hope you're doing good, buddy.)

Kylo is lying on his back on regulation thread-count sheets, with come leaking out of his ass, when he first says it.

“I love you,” to the mop of light hair falling gently over the forehead currently pressed to his sternum.

The mouth associated with said hair and forehead puffs damp breath onto Kylo’s skin. “No you don’t,” Hux says. He is sated. Calm.

Hux pushes lazy open-mouthed kisses across Kylo’s chest. The room feels warm and quiet, though beta shift continues outside the doors.

“I do,” Kylo affirms. He can practically _feel_ Hux rolling his eyes, and attempts to prop himself up onto his elbows, before a punishing bite is delivered to his oversensitive nipple.

“Pull yourself together or else shut up,” Hux orders. Kylo drops back to the bed, and, with the aid of Hux’s left index and middle fingers in his mouth, obediently shuts up.

\--

The end of gamma shift arrives, and Kylo follows the muscle-memorised route to Hux’s quarters in the officers’ corridor. He thumbs the comm button, looks up and down the corridor with both his eyes and the Force, and flicks the latches on his helmet. He resists the urge to toss it back and forth between his hands like some sort of anxious game.

“What are you doing here, Ren?” One of Hux’s hands is on the door controls, the other halfway to running through his hair again. Multiple empty mugs of caf are stacked on one corner of his desk, next to his personal datapad.

“It’s the beginning of your rest shift,” Kylo replies, gently.

Hux glances at the chrono. “Yes,” he says, thrown for a moment. He stares blankly at the doorframe before looking back up. “Yes I suppose it is.”

Hux ushers Kylo inside, orders the door to slide shut. There is a new excitement in his eyes, and Kylo can feel Hux’s enthusiasm for having the nervous exhaustion well and truly fucked out of him. Hux lays his jacket across the back of his chair, looks back at Kylo, and unbuttons his trousers. Kylo accepts the non-verbal invitation to step into his personal space. He kisses him as Hux divests himself of his trousers and shirt.

“Hey,” Kylo rests his helmet against his hip, and Hux’s expression is one of impatience. He projects ‘ _this is moving too slowly_ ’ without meaning to, and a fond smile lifts Kylo’s face in response to this brazen display of desire that Hux has no idea he is revealing. “I love you,” Kylo says.

Hux responds by relocating the helmet to the floor with an exasperated shove. “Take your trousers off, Ren.”

\--

Conference room 2B-alpha is occupied, several galactic-standard weeks later, by the two of them. Hux is worrying at his lip and checking off budget allocations on the room’s terminal in lieu of his smaller datapad. Kylo is meditating on the floor, further out into the centre of the room, partially because ignoring Hux’s small noises of frustration is an exercise in and of itself, and partially because he would really like to fuck Hux once he’s finished working.

Kylo stretches out with the Force in pulses, like the gentle push-pull of the tide as it encroaches onto the beach, or a jellyfish spreading in a gentle rhythm through the sea. He feels the world around him as an extension of his own body, the Force grounding him and freeing him all at once. He allows his attention to flow around Hux, so as not to let Hux’s busy spreadsheet mind clutter the simple peace of connecting to inanimate objects, parts of the ship, and the air itself. Plus, Hux protests when Kylo so much as skims his thoughts; says it feels like a “prodromal migraine”.

Hux chews on his lip, mumbling gently behind it. Kylo feels the burst before Hux realises.

“You know, I love you when you’re bleeding, General, but perhaps you should save it until you’re finished with your work,” he says, completely deadpan.

Hux raises his head to see Kylo’s shit-eating grin, and snakes his tongue out to prod at the newly split lip. He gives Kylo his most withering look over the top of the terminal.

“Come here, Ren.” His voice is exasperated and amused at once. Kylo obeys.

Hux pushes his chair back and to the side, so he is sitting at 90 degrees to the terminal. “Kneel down.” Kylo does so, and the connection he focused on the bars and bolts of the ship is now thrumming in his hands and the back of his head as he presses his cheek to Hux’s knee. Hux spreads his legs, moves forward in the chair to give Kylo better access.

“I-” Kylo starts as he lays his hands on Hux’s thighs. Hux cuts him off with a thumb to his open mouth. The fingers of that hand curl around Kylo’s jaw; the other hand unbuttons his trousers. Hux makes eye contact the whole time, and Kylo is spellbound.

“I don’t want to hear it,” orders Hux. The thumb drags down Kylo’s bottom lip, and the fingers on Kylo’s jaw guide his open mouth to the head of Hux’s cock.

Hux turns his head back to the terminal, activates the door lock for the room, and reopens the budget program. “Good,” he sighs, sounding so much less wrecked than Kylo feels.

\--

“I don’t think so, Ren,” says Hux, self-righteous and thoroughly irritating. “You see-“

“Except,” Kylo interrupts from behind the mask, “The sheer mass of troopers will alert them to our presence, and as the commanding officer on the ground, I think-“

“ _I_ think you underestimate how much you _don’t_ outrank me here, Lord Ren.”

“I don’t _need_ to outrank you, General, I only need to know better. I’m telling you from experience, these rebels have tech that alerts them as soon as we land, regardless of cloaking in the air.”

“And _I’m_ telling you from a strategical standpoint, if they see us anyway, we’ll fare better once we’re on the ground with a high volume of troopers. We outnumber them – that’s always been our advantage against this type of foe, there’s no reason to decrease our total firepower for the misguided and thoroughly incorrect notion that this is a stealth mission.”

Kylo could slap him. “You are nothing more than a jumped up aristocrat, dreaming of real power; power you could never imagine. I could do this mission myself with my knights if you weren’t so afraid of the Force.”

Hux sneers. “Oh really. Well this jumped-up aristocrat has more years of strategic experience and more sense in his head than you. You are” he pauses, irritated, “ruled by your emotions, and you constantly need someone to hold your kriffing leash.”

“I don’t,” Kylo begins, loudly but somewhat stilled, then lowers his voice, “I don’t appreciate you using my feelings against me to get your way.”

“Oh please,” Hux scoffs, “What feelings? We fuck occasionally, I’m a good lay, and you can stop pretending it’s anything more than that, _Lord_ Ren.” He adjusts his position to square up to the hulking mask. “And I’m overruling you on this matter because you are wrong and I’m right.”

Kylo makes an offended sound, which comes through the modulator as a small static crackle. He opens his mouth, swallows the bitterness of his retort, and nods.

“Was that agreement?” Hux blusters. His cheeks are red and his mouth set. Kylo drinks in his face and is glad of the helmet.

“I will take the troopers,” says Kylo, and then he is gone, out of the door and away into the belly of the ship before Hux can bask in his victory.

\--

Hux vibrates with power. He feels as if the thunderous roar of the Starkiller thrums in his body still. He feels drunk and exuberant and alive. He feels… well, he feels like he imagines Ren feels all the time, power flowing through him and coursing through his veins like molten gold.

Starkiller is alive, she breathes beneath them as she sucks the life from the next star along. Soon, she will be ready to fire again. Hux thinks about this, lets it tick away in the back of his mind, lets it consume his ego and light his ambition. Soon, this will all be over for good. No Republic. Soon, no Resistance. There will be an age of peace and order when the First Order becomes a ruling body and lays down the law across this sprawling, lawless galaxy. Soon, no need for a General, but for a different kind of leader.

In this new future, Hux thinks, there will definitely be no need for a Knight.

Ren is underneath him, this time, gasping as Hux slowly lowers himself onto his dick. There’s a heat in the air of Hux’s quarters on Starkiller Base that has nothing to do with environmental controls. It’s humid too, but that might only be between two damp chests that rise and fall heavily, unevenly.

“Fuck,” Hux says, breathless.

Kylo, propped up on his elbows, watches his own dick disappear into Hux’s body, and then looks up at Hux’s face. “Elan…”

Hux looks surprised at the use of his first name, but is too far gone to the thrumming at the back of his head and the blissful fullness in his ass, to feel annoyed. There’s an open, vulnerable look to Ren’s face that he doesn’t want to dissect right now.

Kylo’s lips are still parted, but he doesn’t seem inclined to finish his thought, so Hux begins to move.

He goes slowly, closing his eyes against the stretch at first, his thighs and calves working to raise and lower his hips over Kylo’s, but the small gasps and ‘ah’s from below make him open them again to watch. Ren’s face and mouth are open; his expression trusting, worshipful. Hux leans the heel of his left hand on Kylo’s chest, both for balance and to roll one of his nipples between thumb and forefinger, making Kylo hiss and begin to thrust up in earnest. Hux braces his right arm by Ren’s head.

“Fuck, Elan…” Ren breaks himself off to kiss the pale forearm brushing his cheek. One of his broad hands shifts from Hux’s hip to his face, to stroke the damp hair sticking at the temple there, to tuck fingertips behind Hux’s jaw, to bring him forward and down until their mouths meet in a messy kiss.

Hux rides Kylo slowly, desperation building rather than urgency, intensity rather than haste. Kylo kisses his mouth, his face, his hands, his freckled shoulders, his wrists, every part of him that he can reach. Hux allows himself to be kissed, allows the affection just this once.

‘Just this once’ he tells himself, and pulls Kylo’s hand from his side to close over his cock, and lets Kylo kiss him like a benediction.

It’s hot. It’s hot between them and it’s too much and it’s _good_ and Kylo says “love you, gods, I love you” over and over, and any words Hux might have been able to summon stick in his throat until he comes with a gasp over Kylo’s fist.

It’s wordless and soft and Hux shushes him as Kylo continues to confess to him in more and more broken sentences, and soon there is only the quiet groan as he follows Hux over the edge. Hux rolls off him once Kylo comes down from the high, but doesn’t leave the bed entirely like he normally does. They pant wetly into each other’s mouths, lips touching occasionally, but it’s too much already, they’ve crossed some sort of line and Hux isn’t sure how to step back over it. Kylo clings to him and presses his thumbs to the bitemarks below Hux’s jaw reverently, and in the haze, Hux lets him.

It's almost as if Kylo knew that something terrible was about to happen.

\--

When Hux saves his miserable life and drags him back to the rescue ship, Kylo is already out of his mind with shock and adrenaline and whatever Force-nonsense happened with the scavenger girl back planet-side. He screams and rails against the troopers holding him down and the medical droid trying to manage the freely bleeding wounds on his face and abdomen. Hux digs his fingertips into his own palms through the gloves and doesn’t look at him until whatever the droid just injected forces him into unconsciousness.

Ren doesn’t say much to him afterwards. They, and the remainder of their forces, regroup on the Finalizer, and Ren is confined to a private section of the medical bay.

Hux is too busy with his troops to check on Ren's medical progress very often, and Ren is distraught or asleep whenever he visits. On the occasions where he’s asleep, it’s strange to see Kylo so quiet. Muted, even after he’s removed from the bacta tank. He’d refused to let the medics put his head under, leaving the wound on his face to heal naturally, red and raw. It’ll scar, eventually. Hux isn’t sure why he’d want a physical reminder of his failure, but then again, maybe it wasn’t Kylo’s choice.

(Snoke hasn’t given Hux a single order since the Starkiller disaster, and that unsettles him most of all.)

Ren disappears without a word between one active shift and the next, to train with Snoke, and Hux doesn't see him for a galactic-standard month. He tells himself it doesn’t matter. Hux is busy. Ren is uncontactable. That’s fine.

When Kylo comes back, they don't immediately fall into their old pattern, because Kylo is different now. He's stronger. Less restrained in terms of power, but more restrained in terms of control. He looks different, older somehow, and the scar on his face has healed better than Hux had imagined. He walks the ship without a helmet now. He seems less stretched-thin. Hux feels more stretched-thin than ever.

A week after his return, Hux sends Kylo a message requesting his presence in his quarters, and Kylo appears at the end of that shift. He stands in the corridor outside Hux’s quarters with his hands behind his back, patient and composed. It prickles at Hux, that Kylo hasn’t reached out, has barely said a word to him outside of professional interactions, and yet one message is apparently enough to summon him to heel again. Hux approaches, and Kylo nods to him silently as he punches in the code to the door.

As soon as the door snicks shut, Kylo has him crowded up against the wall, biting at his neck and hands tight on his hips. He _smells_ the same, godsdammit, and despite the time they spent apart, it’s so familiar that Hux _aches_ for it. Kylo’s collected exterior falls away under his touch, cracks off like paint with every slick drag of Hux’s fingers inside him, and even though everything has changed, this at least stays the same. The bitten-off groans as Hux works him open; the way Kylo pushes down onto two fingers, then three; how Kylo falls apart bit by bit as Hux eases the discomfort in his ass by sucking lazily on his cock. It’s pleasing to know that he can still do this, bring Kylo right to the edge and keep him there, that they still know each other’s bodies so well.

Hux feels the exquisite slide into Kylo's body, verbalises it as "gods, I've missed this". His nails are gouging crescents into Kylo's hip, but Kylo's mouth twitches into a smile despite the twin discomforts of nails and adjusting to the stretch. When it’s over, Hux kisses him without preamble, like it’s normal, like this is something they _do_.

Hux asks about the well-healed scar bisecting his face.

“Through the dark side, many things are possible.” Kylo says, cryptically, but he yawns at the end of the sentence and Hux rolls his eyes good-naturedly, prompting him to continue. “Healing is not something I’d considered possible before.”

Hux’s eyes flicker over the long, serrated scar from the centre of his forehead, across his nose and cheek and down over his jaw. “You didn’t heal it all the way, though.” There’s a question in the phrasing, but Hux keeps his tone neutral.

“It’s a new skill to me.” Kylo says simply.

And that’s something new altogether; Kylo admitting an imperfection in himself without anger, without frustration, or indeed admitting it at all.

Kylo comes back again, and again, and at some point Hux stops counting the number of times he comes back from shift to find Kylo awaiting him at his quarters. Kylo stays for Hux's sleep shift more often than not. Hux feels calmer when he wakes, and the nudge of Kylo's mind feels calmer against his own, less like a headache than before.

It’s only when Hux catches himself, at the end of beta shift, smiling at the prospect of Ren waiting for him in his quarters, that he is forced to perform a long internal assessment of just _what in the kriffing hell_ has happened.

Hux enters his room that night and finds Kylo already stretched out, mostly naked, on his bed. He’s not sure how he didn’t realise something was off in himself when he willingly gave Kylo his door code, but hindsight is clear as transparisteel, and all that.

He looks Kylo dead in the eye, and the words just fall out of his mouth like so much ballast from a weighted ship. "I'm fucking well in love with you".

Kylo's face looks about eight years younger as he grins.

" _You're_ in love with _me_!" Hux accuses. He feels buoyant, untethered, happy, but slightly afraid.

Kylo stands, crosses the room, takes Hux's face in both of his huge hands and kisses him. "Yes, I am."

**Author's Note:**

> I switch between Hux calling him ‘Kylo’ and calling him ‘Ren’ in the narrative to illustrate the difference between their private and professional interactions – when Hux thinks of him as a lover vs when he thinks of him as a colleague.


End file.
